[double]

2002

Hotels are places where we bring bits of our lives, exist for a while in their liminal space, and move on. Sometimes moving on means returning home. Or it may mean relocating to another city, entering into marriage or even passing into the afterlife. Such transitions take place at every motel.

Sleep in such places is a troubled, alien sleep, an unreal and in-between experience. We wake unsure where we are or whether we are still dreaming. The dual life of a traveler — the sometimes-mirrored relationship between waking and dreaming — is enduringly present; even registering for the ‘double’ room reminds the traveler of this fact. Moreover, each room tends to be almost identical, doubles of themselves in an endless chain.

[double] was a site specific video installation at The Timbers Motel in Eugene, Oregon, taking place on November 23, 2002. The viewer entered room 101 of the motel where a life-size image of a slumbering woman, in a long white sleeping gown, was projected directly on the surface of a motel bed. The woman tosses and turns restlessly while a man’s voice slowly whispers passages from Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. The installation examines the motel room as a site for parallel experiences between waking and sleeping life. The twin space of the sleeping woman’s restless physicality and her dream state conjures a duality between physical and virtual bodies and additional ‘doubling’ within the spaces, seen or imagined, throughout the motel.